Final Fantasy Reviews by nesfan

Final Fantasy Reviews by nesfan

Makes sense to me. Sometimes you need to do things in games that aren't particularly fun in order to make progress and get to the good stuff.

Final Fantasy Reviews by nesfan

Posted: July 6th, 2011, 7:15 pm

by Adamant1

Yeah, but as I'm saying and he's agreeing with me on, youdon't have to do that stuff.

He's specifically choosing to do something he admits is boring and unnecessary - exactly why he chooses to do this is a bit unclear - but that certainly isn't the game's fault, and shouldn't be held as a negative.

If you think grinding is boring, then just... don't do it. Don't force it upon yourself and blame the game.

Final Fantasy Reviews by nesfan

Posted: July 6th, 2011, 8:55 pm

by nesfan1

[QUOTE=Adamant]

Yeah, but as I'm saying and he's agreeing with me on, youdon't have to do that stuff.

He's specifically choosing to do something he admits is boring and unnecessary - exactly why he chooses to do this is a bit unclear - but that certainly isn't the game's fault, and shouldn't be held as a negative.

If you think grinding is boring, then just... don't do it. Don't force it upon yourself and blame the game.

[/QUOTE]

I'm not saying that I hate levelling up. That would imply that I dislike the battles. Battling is a large part of the game. If I disliked that, the score would be a lot lower. The only reason it is listed as a negative is because it can get boring after a while, just like anything you constantly do can get boring and repetitive. But I don't really hate anything about this game. Besides running from stronger monsters, I don't understand how you can get through the game without levelling up. More levels means: More HP, more spells, more strength, more defense. Why would I want to run from everything that's stronger than me when I can get stronger myself, and kill them?

Final Fantasy Reviews by nesfan

Posted: July 7th, 2011, 5:57 am

by Adamant1

[QUOTE=nesfan]Why would I want to run from everything that's stronger than me when I can get stronger myself, and kill them? [/QUOTE]

Because sitting there for an hour fighting a bunch of pointless battles is boring, and you should attempt to progress through the game instead?

Plus the game is designed so each area will always have a variable group of monsters - stuff you can handle, stuff that's too risky to fight, stuff you can handle if there's not too much of it, stuff that's technically too risky but can't be run from so you have to waste extra resources... the entire point is for you to understand what you're up against and treat it accordingly. If you just sit there grinding for 5 hours until you can overpower everything (which would require a LOT of unnecessary boredom) you're killing off this strategic element, thus... well, doing something boring in order to make the game less fun to play.

Seriously, try playing through the game once without this boring and pointless grinding. You'll find the game is far more fun and involving than you originally thought.

Final Fantasy Reviews by nesfan

Posted: July 7th, 2011, 10:05 pm

by nesfan1

Here's number 2.

Final Fantasy II(Playstation “Origins” port)/ Grade: C-

Unlike the original Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy II does notrequire you to make your own characters. The game has already done that foryou. You get to play as Firion, Maria, Gus, and Leon. As far as characterclasses go, this time around, the game lets you do whatever you want. It allowsfor unlimited customization. You can give your characters any weapon or armoryou want to give them and you can also give them any spell you wish to as well.Once you’ve equipped your characters with a certain weapon, whichever you wantto give them, their skill with that weapon will go up the more they use it.Your characters don’t level up with experience points this time. Instead, theirstats increase depending on what happens in the battle. If a character takesdamage, his/her HP and endurance might increase. If a character deals damage,his/her strength might increase. But this is where I found fault with the game.Maria had the lowest HP for quite a while in my run through because nothingwould attack her and when she did get attacked, she’d always because of her lowHP. I eventually found out that attacking your own characters worked for thisbut it was pretty annoying when I’d accidently kill someone while trying tolevel up. Your spells also level up but if you want your spells to be effective atall, you’re going to have to be ready to level those spells up as far as theycan go. And believe me. That takes a long time. Unless you abuse a glitch thathappens when you enter the command for a spell. The game also uses a “keyword”system, where you have to memorize a certain word like “Mythril” or “Airship”and repeat those words to various people to see if saying that word gets areaction out of them. But watch out, some imperials might kill you if you saythe wrong thing to them.

Now for the story. You start out in the middle of battlethis time. But don’t get too excited about it because you can’t possibly winthis fight. After the fight, you are rescued by Princess Hilda. But wait, Leon’smissing! After you go looking for him with no luck you return to Princess Hildaand join up with her rebellion against the evil Palamecian Empire. Your maingoal this time, other than find Leon, is to kill the emperor. But, remember.This is Final Fantasy we’re talking about so the story will evolve into a fightto save the world rather than just a rebel uprising. Along the way, some peoplefill in for Leon as your fourth party member but they all eventually die orleave for whatever reason. All in all, it’s a pretty good game but not really a“must-have” out of the series.

Final Fantasy Reviews by nesfan

Posted: July 7th, 2011, 11:01 pm

by nesfan1

It happened again. Some of the words are getting stuck together whenever I copy and paste them from the word file I wrote the reviews from. Does anyone know why this keeps happening?

Final Fantasy II (Playstation “Origins” port)/ Grade: C-

Unlike the original Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy II does not require you to make your own characters. The game has already done that for you. You get to play as Firion, Maria, Gus, and Leon. As far as character classes go, this time around, the game lets you do whatever you want. It allows for unlimited customization. You can give your characters any weapon or armor you want to give them and you can also give them any spell you wish to as well. Once you’ve equipped your characters with a certain weapon, whichever you want to give them, their skill with that weapon will go up the more they use it. Your characters don’t level up with experience points this time. Instead, their stats increase depending on what happens in the battle. If a character takes damage, his/her HP and endurance might increase. If a character deals damage, his/her strength might increase. But this is where I found fault with the game. Maria had the lowest HP for quite a while in my run through because nothing would attack her and when she did get attacked, she’d always die because of her low HP. I eventually found out that attacking your own characters worked for this but it was pretty annoying when I’d accidently kill someone while trying to level up. Your spells also level up but if you want your spells to be effective at all, you’re going to have to be ready to level those spells up as far as they can go. And believe me. That takes a long time. Unless you abuse a glitch that happens when you enter the command for a spell. The game also uses a “keyword”system, where you have to memorize a certain word like “Mythril” or “Airship” and repeat those words to various people to see if saying that word gets a reaction out of them. But watch out, some imperials might kill you if you say the wrong thing to them.

Now for the story. You start out in the middle of battle this time. But don’t get too excited about it because you can’t possibly win this fight. After the fight, you are rescued by Princess Hilda. But wait, Leon’s missing! After you go looking for him with no luck you return to Princess Hilda and join up with her rebellion against the evil Palamecian Empire. Your main goal this time, other than find Leon, is to kill the emperor. But, remember. This is Final Fantasy we’re talking about so the story will evolve into a fight to save the world rather than just a rebel uprising. Along the way, some people fill in for Leon as your fourth party member but they all eventually die or leave for whatever reason. All in all, it’s a pretty good game but not really a “must-have” out of the series.

Final Fantasy Reviews by nesfan

Posted: July 8th, 2011, 9:35 am

by Adamant1

[QUOTE=nesfan] But this is where I found fault with the game. Maria had the lowest HP for quite a while in my run through because nothing would attack her and when she did get attacked, she’d always die because of her low HP.

[/QUOTE]

You didn't move her out of the back row, which grants immunity from physical attacks. It's not a fault (the back row obviously has certain strategic advantages), though it's a bit mean of the game to put a character in a position you don't want any characters in at the beginning of the game at the beginning of the game.

[QUOTE=nesfan] I eventually found out that attacking your own characters worked for this but it was pretty annoying when I’d accidently kill someone while trying to level up. [/QUOTE]

That's a very counter-intuitive strategy (that's annoyingly wide-spread as a supposedly good one for some reason) - doing this will increase only increase your max HP, but while high HP will seem useful early on, enemies will eventually start dealing percentage-based damage, and if you have high HP, they'll just deal thousands of HP worth of damage per round, which you'll have a hard time healing.

The most important stat in the game isn't HP or defense, but evade - the damage system is based on multipliers, and your evade stat determines how high the enemy's attack multiplier is. Since these multipliers get rather high late in the game, a high evade stat will make you recieve a lot less damage than a high defense stat. To boost evade, wear a shield at all times, and don't use armor that comes with severe evade penalties.

And that is how to play FF2.

(also, offensive magic is for the most part garbage and should not be bothered with. If you want to deal damage with your magic, use some of the stat-boosting ones like Haste and Berserk, they're far more effective. That mostly holds true for FF1 as well, for that matter)

Final Fantasy Reviews by nesfan

Posted: July 8th, 2011, 5:38 pm

by nesfan1

[QUOTE=Adamant][QUOTE=nesfan] But this is where I found fault with the game. Maria had the lowest HP for quite a while in my run through because nothing would attack her and when she did get attacked, she’d always die because of her low HP.

[/QUOTE]

You didn't move her out of the back row, which grants immunity from physical attacks. It's not a fault (the back row obviously has certain strategic advantages), though it's a bit mean of the game to put a character in a position you don't want any characters in at the beginning of the game at the beginning of the game.

[QUOTE=nesfan] I eventually found out that attacking your own characters worked for this but it was pretty annoying when I’d accidently kill someone while trying to level up. [/QUOTE]

That's a very counter-intuitive strategy (that's annoyingly wide-spread as a supposedly good one for some reason) - doing this will increase only increase your max HP, but while high HP will seem useful early on, enemies will eventually start dealing percentage-based damage, and if you have high HP, they'll just deal thousands of HP worth of damage per round, which you'll have a hard time healing.

The most important stat in the game isn't HP or defense, but evade - the damage system is based on multipliers, and your evade stat determines how high the enemy's attack multiplier is. Since these multipliers get rather high late in the game, a high evade stat will make you recieve a lot less damage than a high defense stat. To boost evade, wear a shield at all times, and don't use armor that comes with severe evade penalties.

And that is how to play FF2.

(also, offensive magic is for the most part garbage and should not be bothered with. If you want to deal damage with your magic, use some of the stat-boosting ones like Haste and Berserk, they're far more effective. That mostly holds true for FF1 as well, for that matter)

[/QUOTE]

That makes sense. I left her in the back row because I always had her equipped with a bow. I knew she was less likely to be hit than the people in the front row, but I didn't think she wouldn't get hit ever. She was occasionally hit by magic and arrow attacks but other than that, nothing. I still didn't the levelling system. I wish they had just kept an experience based system. You don't even have to level up. They could have done it like Chrono Cross, where you gain stat boosts when you get the experience and I would have been satisfied. But the FFII levelling just seemed broken to me. But it didn't take all the enjoyment out of the game. It was still very good. Despite my simple analysis of the story, I really enjoyed it and also the gameplay. You are right about the magic. Except for a fully levelled up Holy, Flare, or Ultima spell, offensive magic was pretty much useless. Cure worked well enough for me after using it frequently. Spells like haste, blink, protect, shell, esuna, and basuna only worked well after they gained a few levels. Otherwise, they would just miss. I'm glad that didn't become a trend. Support that can miss.

Final Fantasy Reviews by nesfan

Posted: July 9th, 2011, 12:28 pm

by Greisha1

I think I posted something like this in a different thread ...

FF2 was a pretty good game; however, I couldn't actually finish the game because I had 4 awesome axe-bearers with high HP and various powerful magic skills ... but sold most of the "ancient weapons" because I wanted to stock up on elixirs. Thus, the emperor wiped my party off pretty quick. Whoops.

Final Fantasy Reviews by nesfan

Posted: July 9th, 2011, 5:17 pm

by Adamant1

[QUOTE=Greisha]I had 4 awesome axe-bearers with high HP and various powerful magic skills [/QUOTE]

As I already said, a team like that is anything but "awesome", but a severaly handicapped team that will take monstrous amounts of damage constantly, and need extreme amounts of healing. Playing without shields is a bad idea and will cause you a lot of problems late in the game.

[QUOTE=Greisha] ... but sold most of the "ancient weapons" because I wanted to stock up on elixirs. Thus, the emperor wiped my party off pretty quick. Whoops.

[/QUOTE]

I'm not sure what you mean by "ancient weapons", but the Emperor falls pretty easily to standard attacks after you've tossed around a couple Haste/Berserk spells.

(instead of Elixirs, having your primary healer refill his/her MP gauge with the Osmose spell is generally a good idea, too)